What if the government promises it won’t use private information and correspondence illegally obtained through unwarranted surveillance and seizure techniques against innocent people? Will that make it okay to violate the Fourth Amendment? What if they pinky-swear? Well, if we can’t trust our elected, appointed and lifetime bureaucrat rulers to do the right thing and follow the rule of law, then (in the words of our dear leader) “we’re going to have some problems here”. So, as you probably know, the first step toward healing is admitting there’s a problem. I’m glad we’ve had this talk, Mr. President.

If we have learned anything from the scandal-of-the-day season we are having, it’s government will not hesitate to harass, threaten, intimidate, penalize, villianize, and otherwise personally or professionally destroy anyone they deem deserving. Notice I didn’t use the term guilty.

Our government has clearly demonstrated a willingness, if not a preference, to abuse its enumerated powers in order to restore a sense of “security” in a very dangerous world… a world they have arguably made more dangerous by a foreign policy that is, at best inconsistent and at worst, plain reckless. The only problem is they use our supposed need for security as a justification for taking unlimited power. Power in which they claim we have passively consented by our silence. Of course, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) functions in secret along with the federal government’s law enforcement agencies like the FBI, who make requests for programs and warrants to surveil. Since it’s done in secret, how will you ever know if you are even being surveilled? Since you won’t know, you can’t fight it in court. So, our silence is guaranteed by the secret nature of the proceedings. So, in order to deliver this “security” properly, they will have to violate our civil rights? They use the IRS to intimidate us from exercising our First Amendment rights of speech, religion, association and a free press… and that supposed to make us feel more secure? They use the paradoxically named National Security Agency (NSA) to violate our Fourth Amendment rights by performing unwarranted and unreasonable searches and seizures of our private communications and timelined movements.

Consider the irony of an agency that claims to deliver security compared to the language of the Fourth Amendment:

“The right of the people to be SECURE in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

This reminds me of the oft-repeated quote from the famed philosopher-swordsmen, Inigo Montoya, when applied to the government’s use of the word, security: “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

The story of William Binney, former technical director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group is chilling. The parallels to the George Orwell story, 1984, are just too easy to make for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. This particular video is more than a year old. It is included to make a point. Binney’s story goes back twelve years. He has been fighting this too long because we have been silent too long. Thank God for brave men like Mr. Binney.